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Patrick Barry

Patrick Barry

Bright yellow signs like missing-child notices appear along the rivers of western Pennsylvania. "Have you seen this fish?" they ask in bold, black letters. An accompanying illustration depicts a strange, hybrid-looking creature—something like a duck-billed shark.

It was early afternoon by the time I met Patrick Barry at the Harmar Marina on the Allegheny River just north of Pittsburgh. The sun was bright and the November air was unusually warm, and Barry, a Penn State graduate student in wildlife and fisheries science, had already maneuvered his 18-foot aluminum motorboat down the ramp and into the murky water. I stepped in carefully and sat down in the back, facing what looked like an old-fashioned metal rooftop antenna. It was rigged to the front deck off the bow and held together at its joints with strips of duct tape.